SS2 Rebalanced Skills and Disciplines

[674149f53eddfRoSoDude]

I definitely think of Scary Monsters and Alarming Cameras as being part of a package with SS2-RSD, but I know not everyone wants those features so that's why they're separate mods. Repairman is definitely recommended as well to help round out the Repair skill some more.

Anyway, small update to Beta 6. The Modify minigame difficulties were too high/too costly considering how much more often you'll be using the skill now. Also, Heavy armor has less speed penalty now.

[674149f53ef6aJDoran]

Sarge945, that sounds good, I will try the same setup/mods as you suggest.

Thanks.

[674149f53f07dPop14]

Localized Pyrokinesis is still insane - I dont know what the formula is, but even with Intensity 0 it does big damage.
And its not consistent, Pipe Hybrid has 12 HP, so we can assume that with Intensity 2 he will die in 6 sec (2 Damage x 2 (Organic)). But for some reason they got one-shotted, as if we crit or something.

[674149f53f1c5RoSoDude]

Yeah, I had the same experience and I'm not sure what's causing it. Will take another look. I may just reduce the duration to try to limit the cheese. It was even worse when enemies would chase you forever while you backpedal without ever trying to attack, leading to free effortless kills on Rumblers. Scary Monsters at least takes care of that.

Unfortunately there's a lot wrong with the psi disciplines that I can't fix without access to the native scripts. Adrenaline Overproduction should add flat damage equal to PSI instead of multiplying damage, and several disciplines need to be rearranged across tiers. But it just doesn't seem possible.

[674149f53f332Pop14]

As a temporary solution I made it not a fire shield, but fire nova instead by setting duration to 1 sec with no scaling. With 0 Intensity it still deals 4 damage (x2 vs them) (I tested it on pimp hybrids),  which is kinda balanced considering that this is mass oriented ability.
And fire immunity is very cryptic thing in my opinion, which is not even mentioned in ability description.

[674149f53f4b3RoSoDude]

I've now set it to 1 damage tick every 0.4 seconds. Vanilla was 5 damage ever 2 seconds, so this is the same damage rate, it just happens more often (thus more reliably). Half-mechanical enemies taking 0.5 damage is not a problem since the engine treats that as a 50% chance to take 1 damage, and they're receiving plenty of ticks.

I also nerfed the duration to 7s + 8s per PSI, which was actually the original duration despite the description stating 15s + 8s per PSI (what it is in SCP). The fire immunity is less than vanilla as SCP's Incendiary Explosion is 11 parts fire damage and 4 parts standard damage, though it is also more consistent as most bots and turrets now properly explode as incendiary... except the slug turret, let's go fix that.

Some other balance stuff coming in the next beta version, which is rolling along. I just wish I could do more with psionics.

[674149f53f5aeRoSoDude]

Uploaded a new beta with some new fixes and minor balance changes. Still getting a Cargo Bay crash most of the time, no idea what to do about it. Was troubleshooting for hours today with no progress. Make sure your quicksave before you hit the bulkhead.

[674149f53f6e7JDoran]

In a confined space, with limited oxygen (such as part of a space-craft), pyrokenisis could potentially eat up enough oxygen to pose a problem to Googles, meaning that in certain situations (if the game's code could be hacked to enable a finite oxygen limit and an in-universe excuse for a lack of oxygen (or the oxygen circulators/regenerators being so slow at that time that they can't produce enough oxygen to compensate for pyrokenisis) then pyrokenisis would be either too risky or even impossible to use. And of course you couldn't use pyrokenisis in a vacuum.

[674149f53f86fvoodoo47]

considering how large VB is (a friggin' pool is available), a tiny fireshield around one person should not be capable of threatening  the oxygen levels in any significant manner.

[674149f53fba2sarge945]

I definitely agree about the oxygen - the game's lore supports it. When using pyro field, the terminals and toilets will grunt, almost as if gasping for air, as the pyro field sucks the oxygen out of the room.

Actually seriously though, I really like the idea of a "fire nova", since IMO "turn it on and it kills stuff" abilities seem very lame in my opinion, plus you have the issue of them not being usable between level loading zones, so I frequently feel ripped off if I had to use an ability near a loading zone.

I could imagine a lot of strategy surrounding a "kill everything in the room but it's expensive" (or hurts you) spell, as opposed to the absolute strategy void that is "press the button and walk around".

I highly doubt that sort of designed is actually balanced though, given the powers tier and cost.

[674149f53fcfbRoSoDude]

New beta again. Some balance changes, installing redundant tech softwares grants 10 nanites per CYB, and a new feature that lets you drag items back into containers (up to 11 slots filled):

https://vimeo.com/562474745

[674149f53fe34Join2]

This looks like it's shaping up into a fine mod. Keep it up.

[674149f540142tiphares4]

https://vimeo.com/562474745

perfect

[674149f54031cRoSoDude]

Didn't intend to put out another beta prior to release but the trailer is slow going and there were a few things that needed hotfixing.

-Fixed Med Bed Keys not going into containers from inventory drag
-Fixed Turret Maint/Repair skill requirement changes getting overwritten by SS2 Repairman
   -Rocket Turrets now Repair 4, Maint 4
   -Rickenbacker Turrets now Repair 5, Maint 5
-Fixed Worm Skin being unresearchable due to script assignment oversight
-Fixed Grenade Launcher BOUNCE setting description indicating the wrong fuse time (5s instead of 2s)
-Fixed new overlays not closing when the relevant object is dragged out of the inventory
-Added close window buttons to new modification menus and armor equip screen
-Decreased Assault Rifle base clip size from 24 to 20
-Added 50% stun resistance to Rumbler

[674149f54040bsarge945]

>completely broke wormskin
>nobody noticed

I guess that's how often it gets used...

[674149f540568Galeb_G4M]

That mod's awesome, thanks! Balancing skills is that one thing I quickly got "re-used" too after rediscovering SS2, and it's great for the cards to be reshuffled, so that I don't go for the same "true and tried" combos I've been doing for years and years.

[674149f540701sarge945]

Yeah that's the big thing for me. There are so many areas of the game that just get completely overlooked (exotic weapons, etc) because the balance very much encourages players to not use them and instead focus on the things that just work reliably, so the unbalanced stuff might as well not exist.

It really says a lot about how important balance is in making a game fun. Disincentivising half the content will make people not want to use it, no matter how fun it is, if they have to take a penalty for doing so.

It's my opinion that the best thing you can do for improving the dynamics and strategy of a game is to balance it. It's even better than adding new content as you're effectively adding content that was already there.

The TL;DR is that, had this mod been the vanilla experience, we wouldn't see 95% of let's plays sticking with standard weapons.

So thanks for this amazing "content" DLC. You've effectively added a new weapon type, "Exotic weapons" in such a good way that they feel like they were part of the game from the beginning 😂😂

[674149f540896remyabel]

Completed a playthrough on normal while focusing on Energy/Exotic. Some thoughts:

- if there were any bugs, I didn't notice any
- it seemed way too easy to level everything up to maximum, though it may be that since I did this after a Secmod playthrough, Secmod was just harder in comparison
- the final boss was a lot harder than I expected, took forever to die with EMP rifle. Grenade launcher reigns supreme; died instantly in Secmod

I had an abundance of items, didn't have any issues keeping items maintained/recharged nor researching everything. I didn't make much use of the modify system. I kept forgetting to actually select an upgrade after putting a FEP on it. And I did end up using the Worm armor pretty much the entire time I had it.

Might try it on a harder difficulty next.

[674149f540bceRoSoDude]

If you're coming from Secmod I'd at minimum install Scary Monsters and perhaps Alarming Cameras to retain a degree of challenge. SS2-RSD is harder than vanilla across the board, but veterans will still find it fairly easy by itself. Scary Monsters makes it harder to melee cheese enemies so ammo and weapon condition management become more important, and Alarming Cameras turns security systems into an actual dynamic threat. You might also look at Alternate Start and Cutscene Skipper for repeat playthroughs, plus Inventory Fumbler if you're like me and you actually enjoy kludgy inventory micromanagement

Regarding resource scarcity and character development, I'd also suggest veteran players choose Hard difficulty or even Impossible. Normal difficulty is really intended for first-time players or players who don't want much of a challenge. On higher difficulties you have to be more selective about your character upgrades due to increased cyber module costs, and ammo is also less common (Easy/Normal/Hard/Impossible randomly reduce all pickup ammo counts by up to 0/15/30/45%). Leveling up is about the same as vanilla, though the highest tier upgrades for stats/skills/psi are a tad cheaper since they were a total rip-off before. However, I've also removed the ability to cheese with Research 0 (organ skill reqs now increase up to 6), Modify 3 (FE devices can only unlock level 2 mods if you have the Tinker trait), Hack 2 (security stations require at least 3), and Maintenance 4 (higher req weapons restore less from each maintenance tool), so those higher upgrades are also more indispensable.

SHODAN is indeed very tanky now, which is very much intentional. Higher health (with rebalanced vulnerabilities) + regenerating shields means you have to actually deal with her projectiles and avatar ambushes, as well as demanding a greater resource stock to kill. You spend so much time accumulating stuff in the game, and the Body of the Many only drains your anti-organic supplies, so SHODAN should give you that last chance to blow all your anti-robot supplies. You can still drop one of the shields and jump over to melee her (plus she's actually vulnerable to the wrench now) but you'd better have a good supply of med hypos to survive her constantly ticking damage aura while you whack away.

Thanks for playing! Final version of 1.08 is very near ready for release.

[674149f540d19Deu sex]

Much hype! After official 1.08 release I suppose it's break time untill SS2EE comes out? It would totally make sense to me.

[674149f540e28sarge945]

I just wish brain of the many was less of a pushover now, and greater psi reavers were less of a joke

Anyway, I'd love a minimod that changes the loot hose to 90%, doubles all nanite costs, and quadruples the respawn rate of enemies. Just as a "fuck you" version when people complain it's too easy 😂

[674149f541299remyabel]

RoSoDude
Cool, I'll try out the scary AI mod. I watched the youtube video and they seem to attack more realistically which is an added bonus.

Good to know that Shodan being tougher was on purpose.

Yes looking forward to the release. I definitely need to stop being complacent and challenge myself more.

[674149f541730remyabel]

remyabel
OK got to engineering so here are some initial thoughts.

First my load order for this particular run:

Code: [Select]

...snip...
Vague health bar
enemy health randomizer
Scary monsters AI
Alternate start
RSD
Repairman
Alarming cameras
Stasis trap
...snip...

I've triple checked and think that's correct.

Anyway, I re-read the changes and somehow missed the fact that you can modify armor, I will check that out.

Enemies are more challenging and I am getting hit more often now. Attached is a screenshot where I was safely hacking while they were killing each other.

Did not mention this before but I like the research changes because now it forces you to actually invest in the tree if you want to make the enemies less challenging earlier instead of waiting for hydroponics deck if you want to conserve cyber modules.

I also found myself taking the "naturally able" trait more often because 35 CM is a lot and with the particular build I didn't feel like any other trait was immediately needed. 35% more melee damage is not needed if I can one hit hybrids with the wrench for example.

For alarms, it's still too easy to just run back to the security station and disable it. Might need to have the player hack it to disable it to make it more challenging but that also might make it too tedious.

Still with all the repair changes I still don't feel compelled to use it. It's one of those weird things where either the skill is so useless that nobody picks it up, or if you force players to use it, then they will have to invest in it everytime. But since you can get by in the game without ever needing repair, I don't pick it up except for novelty purposes. I think Secmod handled this by forcing you to repair energy recharged stations, but I always had enough automatic repair tools (at least on normal difficulty).

> Anyway, I'd love a minimod that changes the loot hose to 90%, doubles all nanite costs, and quadruples the respawn rate of enemies. Just as a "fuck you" version when people complain it's too easy 😂

@sarge945 I actually would unironically want to see a speed run category with this mini-mod.
[Screenshot_2022-01-16_23-41-15.png expired]

[674149f541d98sarge945]

remyabel
For alarms, it's still too easy to just run back to the security station and disable it. Might need to have the player hack it to disable it to make it more challenging but that also might make it too tedious.

This was suggested but they go from being too easy to being too hard.

If it's any consolation, they do get harder when you get to areas like ops, security stations are a lot more scarce there and the corridoors are a lot more winding.

I do agree it's too easy at the start of the game with security stations, but I find the balance later on in the game to be largely fine. I suggested removing some of the security stations early game as part of Alarming Cameras (Hard/Impossible only), but IIRC that idea was rejected.

Still with all the repair changes I still don't feel compelled to use it. It's one of those weird things where either the skill is so useless that nobody picks it up, or if you force players to use it, then they will have to invest in it everytime. But since you can get by in the game without ever needing repair, I don't pick it up except for novelty purposes. I think Secmod handled this by forcing you to repair energy recharged stations, but I always had enough automatic repair tools (at least on normal difficulty).

RSD has less auto repair tools (it removes some), plus it adds a broken QBR on command and a broken energy recharge station on the Rick. Do you have any suggestions for other broken recharge stations?

I feel a few "broken medbeds" would be good too, since medbed keys are VERY rare in RSD and having 1 or 2 extra through repair could be nice.

Also with repairman you should be able to largely avoid hacking turrets and repair them instead.